Sunday, November 22, 2009

11-18-09

Another great day with my mother! I can see her health improving each day, if only in small increments. Her hearing may be a problem, but she isn’t repeating herself constantly or giving the quizzical looks that indicate she simply doesn’t remember the event we’re discussing. I don’t know if her gangrenous gall bladder affected her memory or if time alone was the culprit, but the time or the patch may be helping.

Her strength is improving daily, as is her stamina, which means she’s eager to leave home more often. Before her surgery, she rarely left home unless she absolutely needed to, and after an excursion, she’d be tired for days.

I expected her to be exhausted after yesterday’s shopping adventure, but this morning, she was dressed before I was.

She told me, “I’m ready to go, whenever you are.”

Our first stop was to visit my sister Jane, to show off the clothing purchased yesterday. I could have stayed at Jane’s for another hour or two, just taking photos, but Momma was ready to leave after our first hour. When I first started taking photos, a black charger pulled into Jane’s driveway. A sheriff’s deputy asked if I’d heard any gunshots, but I had not. Jane stepped outside at that moment and spoke with him as well. She had not heard any shots either, although someone had called to report shots in the area.

After the deputy left, Jane told us about her neighbor’s sister who had gone “sight seeing” in the neighborhood where five people were recently shot – two, fatally. A police officer stopped her car and shamed her. He said if she’d been his mother he would put her in jail for her own protection. My hometown has become a “war zone” according to the officer, yet the local paper has politicians calling Colleton County one of the “safest areas in the state.”

Before I was ready to leave Jane’s backyard, she came to tell me that Momma was eager to leave, so we did. She and I had lunch at Silhouette’s Café before we drove to the Firehill Community to pick up her freshly roasted and ground coffee. We opted to take another scenic route home, rather than getting back into the construction traffic we had to contend with on our way to the “coffee-man.”

“All my babies are diapered and fed,” which meant, she explained, that she was in no hurry to return home.

While I drove, she told me how she used to be the one to drive her cousins, rather than being the one driven. She also told me that her father used to put a board across his wagon and hitch it to a horse to drive neighbors around the community on Sunday afternoons.

Today was Wednesday, not Sunday, but my mother and I certainly enjoyed our afternoon drive. We explored dirt roads and rural paved roads that we’d either never seen before or haven’t traveled in many, many years. We didn’t talk much; we simply enjoyed being together.

posted by Unknown at 11/22/2009 11:48:00 PM